All For Nothing
by lightningreveals
Summary: Amy Pond is broken. She's beyond broken. Her soul is numb and her body is scarred. Maybe there's someone who can help her, but they haven't spoken in years. Then one day he shows up unexpectedly at her workplace—St. Gallifrey General Hospital—to begin his job as a replacement nurse. AU / trigger warning
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

It was just another day in the Emergency Room. A tad slow, but it was only early on in Amy Pond's mid-morning shift. On top of that, it was only a Thursday. She had just finished filing a report on her most recent patient—a young boy who had fallen off of his bike and hurt his leg—when the large automatic double doors opened.

Amy looked up out of habit to assess the newcomer. Her gaze always worked from the bottom, shifting upwards: ability to walk properly, visible injuries, blood stains, age and gender. She scanned the person. The first thing Amy noticed was that they could walk perfectly fine, with a swagger even, and had no visible injuries or blood. In fact, they looked perfectly normal. The second thing she noticed was that he was a male. Then she really, truly saw his face.

 _No. No. This can't be happening. He can't be back. Not after all this time,_ she thought.

Still, despite her doubts, he swished through the doors; bow tie, fez, and all. Of course he still had that stupid hat. His face was as young as ever, with maybe just a bit more stubble than he had four years ago. His chin was still prominent and his ears still perky.

He grinned excessively as he trooped over to the reception desk, tugging his bow tie taut. Panic took over Amy's body and she ducked under her desk, shaking. Her breathing hitched and her heart began racing. She repeated a mantra to herself— _Pull it together, Amy. He's just one person._ But he wasn't. She had to get out of there.

Amy looked around, not that she needed to. She came here so often, she could navigate her way to the break room even if the hospital was turned upside down. Amy glanced around; everyone was busy attending to patients. She shot out from under the desk and made a mad dash to the break room, not even 10 metres away. Amy thanked god that it was one of those double-hinged doors with no handle, or she would have crashed right into the door with her fogging eyes.

There was no one in the break room. She could tell because it was completely silent, a stark contrast to the beeps, cries and voices of the ER. Out there, it was organised chaos, but in here, it was just organised. The swept floors, tidy desks and neatly stacked crates helped calm her down slightly. Amy thrived in organisation.

She still needed to get out, though. Amy glanced around, thinking of the quickest, easiest solution. She decided upon a family emergency—her boss was a sucker for family emergencies. Working in the ER probably does that to you. Grabbing a cube of pink post-it notes from her desk, she scribbled on the top one:

 _Had to leave. Family emergency. Tell Nurse Hame I'll make up the hours this Saturday.  
-A_

Amy ripped it off the stack and stuck it to her colleague, Rory's computer. She reasoned that he was such a computer nerd, it would be impossible for him to miss it.

Collecting her bag, Amy made her way out the back exit. Somehow, she managed to start her car and drive home, if only in fear of what would happen if she stayed behind.

* * *

The sky was dull and grey, just like everything seemed to her these days. Nothing ever really had an appeal. The days were monotonous; long and tedious. In Amy's world, every single motion felt like such a huge effort. Even just unlocking the front door to her apartment sucked up so much energy.

She stepped inside and swung her keys somewhere vaguely to the left, where they narrowly made it onto the side table. The nimble girl heaved her body weight against the back of the door and it slammed shut. She slid down it, falling to the ground with her head in her hands.

 _Why was he there? What brought him back? Does he still remember me?_ Now that she had left the hospital and was able to cry freely, nothing came out. Just big, heaving gasps of air. Her legs shook against the cold tiles, and her chest quivered.

Ever since he left, Amy was damaged beyond repair. She had hoped her job as a triage nurse would help her feel something, even pain, but it couldn't fix the hole in her soul. Nothing could.

The story between them was short, almost in a comical manner, considering the pain Amy felt because of it. He had been offered a better job at some swanky private hospital in Michigan. America. A whole 6,046 kilometres away. Before the offer, they'd been great friends for a while, graduating med school together. Amy could feel herself falling for him, though she could tell he didn't feel the same. When he learnt about his job offer, he was so excited. He seemed wary about leaving Amy, but she could see the anticipation in his eyes. She knew just how important this was to him. She told him that she would be fine, that of course he should take the job. But deep down, Amy knew: it wasn't that she had such convincing lying skills. It wasn't that she had practically packed his luggage for him. It was that she wasn't enough to keep him here.

Having all this rush back to her should have made her feel pain, hurt, or anger. _I wish._ Instead, there was nothing. Only numbness; black goo oozing into every particle of her body. It stopped her brain from working properly. It took over all her functions. Amy knew that she had to deal with this the only way she knew how.

She took control of her body, just enough to focus on her hands. Directing them to her purse, she scrambled through the contents. She grew desperate and tossed the contents across the hall, an umbrella here, a bobby pin there. Finally, her hands clasped around the cool metal she had come to find comfort in. She opened the lid of her old mint container.

Amy took them all out— _one, two, three, four, five—_ and lined them up in a row on the tiles. She closed her eyes and picked one, then sat in a position that she was all too familiar with. Back against the wall, arms propped. She could feel the distance between her arms shortening, and soon felt the sweet pain burst in her forearm. _Oh, yes._ It was over too soon, for her, so she made another. This, too, had the same short relief, so rolled over, curling up on the ground, and made another. And another. And another. Each one stinging blissfully, because it allowed her to _feel_. Her arm dripped the same blood that coated the razorblade. Amy loved the pain of it, because it made her feel something. Each incision felt like victory, because she had found her own way of dealing.

There was blood pooling on the tiles, and Amy had run out of space on my arm. Again. She was just about to start on her thighs when her phone rang. She wasn't going to answer it, but caller ID said it was Rory, and she knew he'd be concerned.

Propping herself back upright, she picked it up. "Hello?"

"Hey, Amy. What's up? And don't feed me any of those 'family emergency' lies, you know I don't buy that crap," he said. Damn it, every time.

"It's nothing." _Think, Amy, think._ "I just- I just walked past the oncology unit on the way to lunch. Shook me up a bit."

"Oh, alright," he replied cautiously, "as long as you're fine." His concern was almost touching. Almost. "Listen, did you hear about the new nurse in the ER?"

"No?" God, no. _No, no, no, no._

"Well, there's a new primary emergency department nurse. Remember how the last one retired to be with his family?" Amy made some conformational noise in response. "Anyway, his name's Doctor John Smith. I know, a doctor as a nurse? Well, he has degrees for both, and absolutely insisted that we call him Doctor. Also, he has the strangest dress sense." _You can say that again._

"Right. Well, I have to go now. I'll see you next time I'm in?" She made an effort to end the conversation.

"Of course. Later, Ames." As soon as Rory said that, she disconnected.

Amy knew that she really should have cleaned everything up, but she felt overcome by overwhelming exhaustion. She wanted nothing more than to curl up in a ball and fall asleep. So she did.

* * *

 **This chapter was updated on 28/9/16, mainly just changing it from first person to third person POV. I don't know, I just like third person more when writing for Doctor Who.**

 **Thanks all, have a great day.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

Amy woke up some time around 3am. Damned insomnia.

A single strand of light from a street lamp outside had creeped through the foggy glass of the window beside her door. It shone weakly on her tiles. While everything else was pitch-black, the lamp allowed Amy to see the mess she had created.

It barely fazed her. The only thing she was concerned about was the fact that in her current more rational state of mind, she wasn't going to get back to sleep easily while the entryway was in such disarray.

I sighed and stumbled up to my feet, going through the motions. It wasn't as if this was the first time this had happened to her. Amy had had such practice with cleaning up her own blood that she knew all the right products to use, all the right methods and motions to practice.

Amy wiped at the tiles, only barely aware of her actions. She was in another one of her a zombie-like states. No matter how much she hurt myself and how _good_ and _relieving_ the pain felt, whenever she stopped, she was back to pure numbness. Amy thought too much and felt too little.

After the tile were mopped and the mop head was rinsed and air-drying, the obsessive compulsive part of Amy took control. It started out small, just like always—the picture frames weren't levelled, the drawers on the bench next to the door weren't pushed in properly, the ornaments weren't placed in their correct spots. The next thing she knew, it was 8am and the kitchen had been deep-cleaned to perfection, the doorknobs had been polished, and the bookshelves and DVD cabinets had been re-organised no less than three times—this time by alphabetical titles, compared to the previous arrangements of genre and colour.

Realising the time, Amy somehow snapped herself out of this robotic state. After all the cleaning products and equipment had been stored away, she ended up on the shower floor with hot water pounding on her back. She couldn't bring herself to get up and turn the temperature down, so she left it at the scalding heat it was. The warmth felt nice, though, despite its capability of giving her first-degree burns.

Finally deciding that she had been in the shower for far too long, Amy reluctantly rose and turned off the tap. She wrapped the thickest towel she could find around herself. All the towels that Amy owned were a charcoal grey—she had given up on white linen a long time ago.

Amy stood in front of her mirror and stared at herself. Her hair now only fell to her shoulders. She had grown tired of maintaining it, and in the midst of a breakdown that was a hybrid of a panic attack and an existential crisis a few weeks ago, had chopped it off at the shoulders. When she went to the salon to fix her poor job—in an effort to even it out, they had to trim it so it now hung just below her chin—Amy had them dye her locks a deep, dark purple. It was honestly essentially a black, however it shone purple in the right lighting. The natural ginger shade from her past reminded her of _him,_ always affectionately teasing her about the fire growing on her head.

She liked the thicker towels because they hid all the parts of her body that she deemed inadequate. To Amy, they hid the way her chest was too small, and the way her stomach was too big. They hid all the visible parts of herself that screamed _failure!_ at every part of her being.

When she had towelled herself off and gotten dressed again, Amy made her way to the kitchen to start the kettle. There was no way she was getting back to bed for a quick nap now, and she knew from an abundance of experience that it was much better to do something productive rather than lie in bed for hours, waiting for the freedom of sleep.

In Amy's point of view, a cup of tea almost always helped make life seem liveable. _Almost._ She considered herself a tea snob, enjoying only small selection of teas, but for when she was in different moods. Iced peach tea was for when she had an enormous amount of work and was procrastinating. Lemon and ginger was for in the morning, to wake herself up. Peppermint tea was for whenever she was stressed or anxious, which seemed to be all the time, these days. She guessed it was safe to say that she drank an enormous amount of peppermint tea.

Amy full-well knew that she was actively ignoring the problem at hand. It probably wasn't the healthiest thing to do, but she decided to put off dealing with it until she actually had to confront it. Which would, she figured as she looked at the microwave clock, be in just over 5 hours.

 _Well, crap._

* * *

 **Rip it's so short, but I really don't care. That just felt like the best place to end this chapter. Also, I've spent the last hour rewriting this in third-person POV, so.**

 **I was thinking of maybe doing next chapter from Matt's perspective? And by Matt, I mean John Smith, of course. WhOOps.**

 **Goodnight. x**


End file.
